Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

Mazie’s Diary, November 9, 1925

I smoked and smoked all day today, and licked my flask clean. An early snow for the season. I watched my customers dust the flakes off their coats, smiling. When it was all over, there were peach-colored clouds gliding through the sky. I thought: No one else can see this sky like I can. No one else sits here and watches it change all day except for me. I see the snow and I see the clouds and it is all a show for me. Everything is for me.

Pete Sorensen

I loved her because she was tough and knew what she wanted. It wasn’t like she always knew, but by the end of the diary I think she did. I mean she spent all this time trying to acquire her exact purpose in life. Maybe she didn’t mean to, but she did. And how many of us get to know that? I’m pretty sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing with my shop, but what if I’m supposed to be a painter? Or build houses? I know I’m not supposed to be in a band anymore. No one would give a shit about our reunion tour. But what if I’m supposed to move back to Saint Paul to take care of my mother in her old age? Like that is actually a thing it would make sense to do. That is what people do; they take care of their family. She knew that! She did it. She knew how to be a human being.

I wasn’t jealous of her, but it did make me a little angry with myself that I don’t know exactly everything yet. But being a little angry with yourself is all right. That’s how shit gets accomplished. You know what I mean. I know you do.

Mazie’s Diary, January 15, 1926

Dolores died, and it took two days for anyone to find her. We all thought there was an animal trapped somewhere, a dead rat in the floorboards. Her hair went white during that time. It happened over the weekend. No knitting circle on the weekends, so it took till Monday to realize the poor woman was gone.

Rosie says she can smell the body still.

She said: You can’t smell it? I know you can smell it.

I said: I ain’t moving again, Rosie.

She said: Who said anything about moving?

I asked Tee to teach me a prayer Dolores would have liked. All that she did for me I could do for her.

I said: It’s tragic, lying there like that for days.

Tee said: She lived a long life, and there is that to remember.

I said: Rosie’s kicking up a storm now. She’ll say the place is haunted in no time.

Tee said: That’s our Rosie.

I said: I’m tired of looking for apartments.

Tee said: The wandering Jews.

Mazie’s Diary, February 13, 1926

Postcard from the Captain. Just a sailboat in the water and his name with love, and nothing else.

Every morning I stand at the sink, I wash my face, I brush my teeth, I brush my hair, and then, when I’m ready, I look down at myself, and I think of him.

Filthy, awful, beautiful man.

Mazie’s Diary, February 18, 1926

Tee’s truly my best girlfriend, a good friend to have. She stops by the cage now nearly every day, even in the rain. Sometimes she comes home with me for tea after work. Rosie coddles her. She loves any sort of spiritual type, no matter what they believe in, as long as they believe. And though Tee’s not our Jeanie she feels like family. But I’ve never seen her home, after all these years.

I said: Tee, why don’t you invite me over?

She said: I’ve got the smallest room. The two of us could barely fit at the table.

I said: Aw, Tee, I’d squeeze in for you.

I like to have a little fun with her. I like to grab at her belly through her habit and try to tickle her. Little Tee. Today she said I could come by sometime though. After we move again.

George Flicker

These landlords said they paid first and last, and when they moved out the apartments were cleaner than when they got there, so there were no complaints. It was just kooky behavior. How could they have been happy doing that? You had to wonder. They were always the kind of family that circled the wagons, but now, with all the moving, that circle was closed shut. So who knows why? No one could keep track of their business.

The only thing you could count on when it came to them was seeing Mazie in her ticket booth on Park Row. Sometimes I’d swing by Chinatown for lunch, my office not being too far from there, and I’d see her there, and that was a nice way to pass the time. My crush on her hadn’t withered, I’ll be honest with you. We were both young people. Her bosom grew every year, and she wore the most flattering dresses. That girl just had a really enjoyable figure.

I was always waving to her from the street corner. If she didn’t have a line or her head in one of her magazines — she loved all those True Romance type of magazines — she’d wave back too, even blow me a kiss sometimes. She’d yell, “George Flicker, there he is, ladies and gentlemen, a real-life war hero!” She was the only one who didn’t forget.

Mazie’s Diary, April 1, 1926

416 Mulberry Street. Our neighbors are young, single ladies, most of them in nursing school. Top floor. On Friday nights they go to the movies together. They stand in my line and I sell them tickets and they all greet me with respect. They’re not so much younger than myself, but it feels ages between us. They’re just starting out and most days I feel like I’m already done.

Mazie’s Diary, May 3, 1926

Rosie said: Why are they having so much fun? Why are they so goddamned happy all the time? What’s with the tittering?

I said: They’re young and full of life! Look, lady, we wanted young. And none of them are going to die on us.

Rosie said: Not unless I kill them.

Mazie’s Diary, May 15, 1926

Tee lives down near the water, in a narrow but tall building filled with all the other extra Theresas from her settlement. Her building is quiet, whispers all around us, the lobby barely lit. We came in off the street and it was as if Manhattan disappeared behind us. So different from all the homes I’ve had in the city, where I’ve always heard the streets below calling up to me.

The elevator was out, so we climbed the stairs to get to her apartment on the top floor. Round and round. A maiden high in a castle, was what I was thinking. As soon as we entered her apartment, she took off her headpiece. She looks so young without it. That blond hair hanging about her shoulders. A real blonde, not a fake one like me.

The room is as small as she promised. Dark gray walls, two square windows, one with a view of the Woolworth Building. I asked her if the lights kept her up at night and she said she didn’t need much sleep.

I said: That’s right. Who needs sleep?

She said: When there’s so much to be done.

There was a hot plate in the room, and a small card table for dining. One giant painting of Jesus, and a few smaller ones. A single bed, a wooden frame, one small pillow, a wool blanket. A bookshelf, books in Latin. A Bible on a nightstand. I realized Tee doesn’t have much more than the people she helps.

Next to the Bible there was a framed photograph of Tee with her parents, standing in front of a waterfall, somewhere upstate I imagined, where her people are from. Her hair was all around her shoulders, and she was young and smiling. Tee, before sisterhood.

She cracked a window and put on some stew. I bought some bread at the market yesterday morning, and we barely used our spoons as we ate, just hunks of bread soaked in stew. We sucked our fingers. It was salty and I liked it. When we were done, we pushed the bowls to the center of the table.

I noticed the ring on her wedding finger. Married to Christ. I took her hand in mine and twirled the ring. I asked her if she always knew she had her calling.